Healthcare is a Human Right, a Civil Right
Sarita Sarvate
August 14, 2009
Like millions of Americans, I have been waiting with bated breath for the healthcare reform that candidate Obama promised during his fall campaign.
It is not me I am worried about, but my sons, who have mild learning disabilities. I do not know what the future holds for them. All I know is that they are not following in the footsteps of stereotypical Indian American youths, winning spelling bees, attending Ivy League colleges, and producing 2.4 over-achieving children.
So President Obama has exactly one year to put a national health plan into place, by which time my oldest will turn twenty-three, becoming ineligible for his parents’ plan.
I know plenty of young people who, learning disabled or not, face similar prospects.
Diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a friend’s daughter came home for treatment after quitting law school, only to discover that she needed to stay in college to use the university’s insurance. So this brave young woman did her assignments while undergoing chemo.
Isn’t there a better way to fight cancer than having to take tests while looking death in the eye?
Luckily, the girl recovered, but the episode was sobering.
After graduating from college, the daughters of two other friends are doing part-time jobs with no benefits, joining the ranks of America’s fifty million uninsured.
Watching TV images of people screaming insults at town hall meetings, I wonder, do these citizens not have children?
Or do they hate Obama more than they love their sons and daughters?
Ironically, Obama’s New Hampshire town hall meeting to address health care reform happened the same day that Eunice Kennedy Shriver(President John F. Kennedy’s sister) passed away. It was then I learned that she had been responsible for creating the Special Olympics and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Shriver had succeeded, I was told, because she had focused the conversation about disabled people on civil rights, not charity.
Obama: take note.
Just as a handicapped person has an equal right to amenities that a healthy person has, a sick person should have a right to become healthy via treatment, right?
Why does this simple premise elude so many Americans?
The short answer? Because they are ignorant of their own history.
In 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on the verge of signing into law a national healthcare system as a part of his “New Deal.” But the usual suspects, including the American Medical Association, raised Cain, supporting private plans that ensured profits for doctors, pharmaceutical corporations, and insurance companies.
Ironically, services like electricity and natural gas have long been labeled “basic necessities,” in our society, with the proviso that they will be made available to every citizen at “just and reasonable rates.” Over a century and a half, regulatory precedents were established to provide these commodities to every consumer regardless of economic status, so that today, the poor qualify for utility subsidies, both at the state and the federal level.
So, if electricity and natural gas are basic necessities, doesn’t it logically follow that medical care should be a fundamental right of every citizen too?
Yet no law of Congress has ever made it mandatory for American citizens to receive this most basic of human rights.
Right wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation have long cast the issue in terms of economics, not civil or human rights. They have also successfully mobilized their largely ignorant and uninformed base. Driving through Oregon on a recent business trip, I heard talk radio inciting people to raise hell at town hall meetings. There might only be a handful of people opposed to Obama’s plan, but the republican party has made sure they will all show up at every event.
Democrats, on the other hand, have failed to organize the silent majority;the uninsured are not marching in the streets; the poor who can’t afford to buy private insurance are not showing up at town hall meetings; the seriously ill who have been denied treatment are not insisting on a single payer system.
Alas, those who need healthcare reform are too busy making ends meet.
It is clear to anyone with a half a brain that our healthcare system is broken. A system that focuses on expensive treatment rather than inexpensive prevention, a system which pays paltry sums to primary physicians but millions to specialists, a system which puts insurance clerks in charge of deciding who gets care, will never truly care for patients, will never create a healthy society, will never be cost-effective.
I, for one, don’t understand what value the insurance middle man adds to our well being. Every time I need a specialist, my doctor has to fill out an HMO referral form, the utility of which I have yet to fathom.
So I am wondering, why are so many people suspicious of government bureaucrats but don’t mind HMO hacks deciding whether they live or die?
It was George Bernard Shaw who wrote nearly a century ago that a medical system which profited from people’s suffering would never be humane.
That axiom holds true today more than ever before.
Sarah Palin and other extreme right wingers are scaring people by alleging that Obama’s healthcare plan contains death panels. Never mind that our society already has death panels in the form of insurance bureaucracies who doom people by denying them treatment in case of pre-existing conditions or inability to pay.
The only way to get rid of the middle man would be to turn to a single-payer system, the idea of which Obama has long abandoned as being politically impractical, thanks to the influence of powerful lobbyists on our representatives, who depend on them for their campaign funds.
What remains on the table is a governmental system in competition with private plans. And the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical corporations are battling this much-diluted proposal too, on the grounds that industry will not be able to compete with the government. Is this the same corporate sector that usually claims that competition is good, not bad for business?
The AMA, which is dominated by specialists, is also resisting reform, even though my own doctor supports it. The reasons are obvious. The organization doesn’t want to cap doctor’s salaries and charges.
The United States stands today at a crossroads. One fork leads to a society in which a select few squander money on unnecessary procedures while many others suffer from curable conditions due to lack of treatment.
The other road leads to a civilized society in which healthcare is a basic human right, a civil right.
The choice is yours. If you wish to live in a society where this basic human and civil right is offered to every citizen, you need to contact your senator now so your voice will not be drowned out in the static of media noise.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Sotomayor v. Retro White Males
Sotomayor vs. Retro White Male.
SARITA SARVATE, July 22, 2009
The confirmation process for Judge Sonia Sotomayor has demonstrated once again that we have a long way to go in achieving racial and gender neutrality in America. Why else would a high achiever like Sotomayor be forced to reassure people that her background wouldn’t affect her decisions as a judge? Has a white male ever been required to issue such a declaration prior to assuming any office?
Even the New York Times has written an editorial that insists upon a higher scrutiny for Sotomayor than any prior nominee to the Supreme Court has been subjected to, as if the very phrase “Latina Judge” would send shudders through American society. Perhaps it raises the specter of a jurist who would be sympathetic to allowing millions of illegal immigrants across the border.
It is especially saddening when I recall the contrasting confirmation hearings of Chief Justice Roberts a few years ago, when conservative and liberal commentators alike lavished praise on the candidate’s impeccable pedigree.
It seemed to me then that anything Roberts said in his confirmation hearings was interpreted in his favor, as long as it was not overtly reactionary. Yet, if Congress had studied the memos Robert wrote as associate counsel to Ronald Reagan, it could have predicted his latest decision favoring white firefighters in New Haven; for he wrote back then that “affirmative action required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates.” He also narrowly interpreted Title IX which gives equal rights for women in college sports and rejected proportional racial representation in voting.
Moreover, Roberts is a self-professed “originalist,” which means that he interprets the constitution according to the norms of the society in which the founding fathers, who were all white male property owners, constructed it in 1777. “Originalist” therefore translates into “white male retrogressive values.” What could be more biased than that?
Yet, many congressional representatives are using a double standard in telling Sonia Sotomayor that she should not use her experience and perspective as a Latina in giving her opinions from the bench.
If Sotomayor has a defect, it is that, unlike Roberts, she has been candid about her origins and their influence on her. After growing up in the Bronx, after battling prejudice and inequality, after building an illustrious career, she perhaps felt she had earned the right to speak her mind.
I, for one, applaud her for it.
But I suspect there is another subtext to Sotomayor’s story; namely that she is a single woman and therefore severely handicapped. Battling Type 1 diabetes for 47 years has been a cinch for this woman, but not fighting the stigma of being a middle-aged single woman. David Brooks’ column in the New York Times labels her a workaholic, and points out her inability to sustain romantic relationships. This focus on her personal life has highlighted yet another double standard applied to women nominees versus men.
Shouldn’t her personal life be irrelevant to her performance as a Supreme Court justice? Why did her questioners feel free to take the liberty of making patronizing remarks unrelated to her professional career?
It seemed as though Sotomayor felt pressured to bend over backwards to please the ruling elite in Congress, to the point of having to avow that she would resist empathy while judging from the bench and that she would interpret the constitution strictly, and follow precedent. Through the three days of hearings, she sat impassively, delivering emotionless answers, that gave away little of her inner thoughts.
I wish Sotomayor could have defied the Republicans in Congress by attesting to the quality that Obama, while nominating her, named as essential in a Supreme Court Justice, namely, empathy.
Perhaps Sotomayor believed she had no choice. Perhaps women still need to hide their genuine feelings and opinions in order to rise to the highest ranks in this country. And Sotomayor's ethnic background made it even more imperative that she "fit in" in a predominantly Caucasian court.
The good news is that to get confirmed, Sotomayor does not need the votes of those Republicans whose attacks on her have bordered on racism.
The bad news is that we have reached a new low in the evolution of the Supreme Court in which no future nominee will be able to articulate any passionate opinions on any subject, but will have to emulate instead the Roberts model of cold blooded, calculated, covert, right wing activism.
SARITA SARVATE, July 22, 2009
The confirmation process for Judge Sonia Sotomayor has demonstrated once again that we have a long way to go in achieving racial and gender neutrality in America. Why else would a high achiever like Sotomayor be forced to reassure people that her background wouldn’t affect her decisions as a judge? Has a white male ever been required to issue such a declaration prior to assuming any office?
Even the New York Times has written an editorial that insists upon a higher scrutiny for Sotomayor than any prior nominee to the Supreme Court has been subjected to, as if the very phrase “Latina Judge” would send shudders through American society. Perhaps it raises the specter of a jurist who would be sympathetic to allowing millions of illegal immigrants across the border.
It is especially saddening when I recall the contrasting confirmation hearings of Chief Justice Roberts a few years ago, when conservative and liberal commentators alike lavished praise on the candidate’s impeccable pedigree.
It seemed to me then that anything Roberts said in his confirmation hearings was interpreted in his favor, as long as it was not overtly reactionary. Yet, if Congress had studied the memos Robert wrote as associate counsel to Ronald Reagan, it could have predicted his latest decision favoring white firefighters in New Haven; for he wrote back then that “affirmative action required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates.” He also narrowly interpreted Title IX which gives equal rights for women in college sports and rejected proportional racial representation in voting.
Moreover, Roberts is a self-professed “originalist,” which means that he interprets the constitution according to the norms of the society in which the founding fathers, who were all white male property owners, constructed it in 1777. “Originalist” therefore translates into “white male retrogressive values.” What could be more biased than that?
Yet, many congressional representatives are using a double standard in telling Sonia Sotomayor that she should not use her experience and perspective as a Latina in giving her opinions from the bench.
If Sotomayor has a defect, it is that, unlike Roberts, she has been candid about her origins and their influence on her. After growing up in the Bronx, after battling prejudice and inequality, after building an illustrious career, she perhaps felt she had earned the right to speak her mind.
I, for one, applaud her for it.
But I suspect there is another subtext to Sotomayor’s story; namely that she is a single woman and therefore severely handicapped. Battling Type 1 diabetes for 47 years has been a cinch for this woman, but not fighting the stigma of being a middle-aged single woman. David Brooks’ column in the New York Times labels her a workaholic, and points out her inability to sustain romantic relationships. This focus on her personal life has highlighted yet another double standard applied to women nominees versus men.
Shouldn’t her personal life be irrelevant to her performance as a Supreme Court justice? Why did her questioners feel free to take the liberty of making patronizing remarks unrelated to her professional career?
It seemed as though Sotomayor felt pressured to bend over backwards to please the ruling elite in Congress, to the point of having to avow that she would resist empathy while judging from the bench and that she would interpret the constitution strictly, and follow precedent. Through the three days of hearings, she sat impassively, delivering emotionless answers, that gave away little of her inner thoughts.
I wish Sotomayor could have defied the Republicans in Congress by attesting to the quality that Obama, while nominating her, named as essential in a Supreme Court Justice, namely, empathy.
Perhaps Sotomayor believed she had no choice. Perhaps women still need to hide their genuine feelings and opinions in order to rise to the highest ranks in this country. And Sotomayor's ethnic background made it even more imperative that she "fit in" in a predominantly Caucasian court.
The good news is that to get confirmed, Sotomayor does not need the votes of those Republicans whose attacks on her have bordered on racism.
The bad news is that we have reached a new low in the evolution of the Supreme Court in which no future nominee will be able to articulate any passionate opinions on any subject, but will have to emulate instead the Roberts model of cold blooded, calculated, covert, right wing activism.
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